Over time people have become more energy-conscious. Because of this, the construction industry started building structures that are far “tighter” than their predecessors, with respect to air leakage. Buildings are now carefully designed to provide occupants with a precisely metered exchange between indoor and outdoor air. The exchange between indoor and outdoor air is selected to provide a healthy quality of indoor air, with a minimum of energy usage for heating or cooling the outdoor air introduced into the building. However, inevitably the tradeoff sometimes results in unacceptable indoor air quality. Moreover, the use of new building materials having many superior and desirable properties in both renovations of old buildings and new construction sometimes aggravates the air quality problems because the building materials outgas undesirable substances.
With respect to air quality in the home or in schools, incidence rate of asthma, which is often triggered by poor indoor air quality, is growing exponentially. It has more than doubled since the eighties, with the current level of 17 million American sufferers projected to double again in two decades. A recent national survey reported that 56% of all households now contain at least one member with allergies or asthma. In all, over 90 million Americans are reported sufferers of asthma or allergies, with direct costs of about $19 billion annually for medical care, pharmaceuticals, and asthma and allergy products. For example, air cleaners are now one of the fastest growing household products, with over 16 million households using at least one unit. Particular aspects of indoor air quality are a concern, such as toxic molds, dust mites, carbon monoxide poisoning, allergens, and various chemical pollutants.
With respect to air quality in commercial or industrial environments, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that one-third of the 4.5 million commercial buildings in the U.S. offer less than acceptable air quality. The EPA has also stated that indoor air quality is one of the top five environmental health risks of our time. Business Week in its lead cover story of June 5th, 2000, “Is Your Office Killing You? The dangers of sick buildings”, reported that U.S. companies could save as much as $258 billion annually by preventing sick-building illnesses and improving worker performance by creating offices with better indoor air.
Thus, indoor air quality is an issue of great importance in residential, commercial and industrial environments. Before the air quality in these environments can be improved, it should be first measured and evaluated to determine if a problem exists and then diagnosed to evaluate the nature of the problem. Unfortunately, it is currently very expensive to obtain a customized indoor air quality assessment of a building plus a customized set of recommendations to solve any potential air quality problems uncovered. To accomplish this today requires the use of costly, hard to apply instruments and the expertise of relatively expensive industrial hygiene professionals.
As an affordable alternative, building owners and occupants can explore books and websites having generalized information on air quality. However, without indoor air quality expertise to evaluate a specific building's situation, this generalized information is of only limited value. Similarly, instruments can be rented to take specific measurements, but this can be very time consuming and expensive. Moreover, useless data can be generated without properly taking into account building specific data and information to properly set up the instruments and determine where and when to run a test. Furthermore, without monitoring, analyzing and adapting the data taking process in real time, based on the real time data from the instruments, important events and trends can easily be missed. Additionally, problems in the instruments or their locations can render a whole series of measurements useless. These functions are traditionally supplied by the industrial hygiene professional, who provides a personalized assessment of the indoor air environment.
Beyond the use of an industrial hygienist employing sophisticated air measurement instruments, there have been only limited options to help the building owner or occupant obtain information about the air quality of their environment. One such device is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,553,006. This patent discloses a system that is limited to gathering air quality data and transmitting the data through a network, serial interface or phone line to a user. There are also systems, as discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,892,690, that gather air quality data from a building and then send the data through the Internet to a customer accessible website, where it is archived and available to the customer in graphically displayed form. Although convenient for a customer, there is no analysis of the data, nor is there any way for the system to adapt its operation or to be customized automatically based on the specific building being measured or the data that is gathered. U.S. Pat. No. 6,125,710 discloses a networked air measurement system and describes a method for inexpensively gathering air quality or environmental data. However, it does not describe any methods for customizing the data taking process to a given building or analyzing the data that is taken.
Some available devices measure and data log some environmental air parameters and then send emails to a customer based on predetermined levels being exceeded, but do not take into account anything more sophisticated in their analysis of the data. Nor do these devices employ any method to reprogram or modify the testing program remotely.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,226,115 describes an outdoor air monitoring device, held aloft by a balloon, that employs remote radio wave communication for triggering the taking of a sample of ambient air. However, this device is not designed for indoor use, requires intervention of a trained operator to decide when to take the sample and involves expensive technology with limited range due to the use of radio wave communication for transmission to the device.
None of the prior art disclosed provides the user with customized information and recommendations about the air quality within or immediately around a specific building. As such, there is a need for an economical, easy to use system to provide customized, understandable and easily accessible information to a building owner or occupant. Also, there is a need for a system that can properly diagnose air quality problems and recommend solutions without requiring the expense of an industrial hygiene professional.